


Oh, Starlight

by thorsodinsn



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Cute, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Shipping, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 09:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thorsodinsn/pseuds/thorsodinsn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You could never see the stars before,” she muses, her sigh like a summer breeze. Her head tilts, the fringes of her hair falling over her jacket’s collar. “Too many streetlights. Houselights. It drowned them all out.” || Daryl and Carol share a sweet moment while resting on a run. || Drabble || Caryl || Season Undetermined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, Starlight

                She moves through the darkness as though she is darkness itself; as though she is a shadow melting into black, slinking along the fringes of the night unseen. He may not have even noticed her if it were not for the playful moonlight shining in her hair. With her head turned up, she catches starlight in her eyes and her thin lips pull into the faintest of smiles.

                They settle, at least, on old porch steps. The wood moans protests beneath their weary feet. They’re pressed so close their arms touch, shoulder-shoulder on the narrow stoop. She smells like sweat and wildflowers and something all her own, something that is not as wild as the forest nor soft as ivory soap, something that somehow overpowers the days in grimy clothes and miles trekked through endless stretches of wood.

                She stretches out her legs, leans against the rail, and tilts her eyes up to those many miles of stars. Somewhere, an owl sings its nightly hymn. The cicadas chirp their incessant lullabies and the tall grass bends at the whim of the wind. The whole world spinning in loops all around him, lives upon lives all happening at once, songs sung into the pitch black of the night and colors shifting and changing in shadows and light and yet the singular focus of his undivided attention is her.

                In the silver light of the moon she seems ethereal. She rests her elbows on her knees and puts her chin in her hands and he sees the exhaustion manifested in dark circles beneath her eyes, sees the faint little lines tugging at her mouth, etched by grief and set by sorrow. Her fingernails, cracked and caked with dirt, are bitten to the quick. Her skin is worn and rough—he wonders, as he watches her, how her hand might feel if he held it. There is a story in her eyes, wisdom flickering behind the childlike wonder alight in them as she watches the stars wink down at her.

                “You could never see the stars before,” she muses, her sigh like a summer breeze. Her head tilts, the fringes of her hair falling over her jacket’s collar. “Too many streetlights. Houselights. It drowned them all out.”

                Daryl hums in though and follows her gaze up to the great map of silver sparks. He forgot just how many there were, forgot how some clustered as if for warmth on chilly nights and how others bolted for freedom in the open spaces left behind. He leans a little closer, his hand resting on the step behind her back, his chest close enough for her shoulder to brush.

                “You see that one right there?” he says, his voice hardly more than a low murmur as he points up at the great canvas spread above them. She squints for better focus, leaning forward before giving a little noise of agreement and a nod of her head. “You follow it right down to the next, then dip down right to that one—that’s Aries.”

                She follows the lines he draws with his finger, then turns to him with an amused little smile. “That right?” she asks.

                “Mmhm. Then right next to it, startin’ with that star there, you got Pieces. You see how it goes all the way down, endin’ in that little circle?”

                “Yeah,” she says, eyes flitting back to the pictures in the sky. Daryl’s own gaze fixes itself on Carol as she studies the stars. There a few long beats of silence, interrupted only by a crickets excited chirrup, before she asks, “How about that one?”

                “That boxy one there?”

                “Yeah. Is there a name for it?”

                “Hm. Pegasus, I think. That box, it’s the body. You got the legs right there—and there. And that, right on the other side, that’s supposed to be the wing.”

                Carol gives a satisfied hum. She crosses her arms over her chest and leans back against the stair. Daryl jerks away at first, the closeness an electric shock, relaxing back into place only when she offers him her patented playful smirk. “How do you know all this?”

                Daryl is quiet for a long while. He doesn’t look her in the eye, but he feels her eyes on him. They study his profile the same way they had been studying the stars. He busies himself with spotting every character leaping and bounding all across the sky. He finds Andromeda, Aquarius, then lets out a heavy sigh. “My mom.”

                “She was into stargazing?”

                “I guess.” Daryl shrugs. “She knew ‘em all. Taught me, taught Merle. Maybe that was the only thing she taught us. Ain’t never forgot it, though. Guess that means she did a good job.”

                Silence settles over them, a blanket on a cold winter’s night. He can still feel her gaze. He keeps his own trained upwards. The cicadas’ chorus picks up and a grasshopper leaps across the lawn. Carol shifts beside him, closing the already miniscule gap between them. Her hand reaches towards his own and his eyes jerk down as her fingers lace with his. Her hand is warm, he finds, and her skin feels softer than it looks. Her thumb gently strokes the back of his palm and when he looks at her she offers the smallest of smiles. She nods towards the sky and squeezes his hand.

                “Show me more.”


End file.
